Month of February 2016

Most of our time this month has been spent helping Brent & Lorraine remodel their home in Mesa. They are putting in new kitchen cabinets and new flooring.

We have all the upper cupboards in now. And just waiting on the counter top to finish the lower cabinets. (Estimated to arrive on March 5th).

And we are working on the floors.

We take a lot of breaks.

But we're making good progress.

Check back next month to see the final.

Went to visit Myra & Deon.

We went to see Slades a couple of times to meet with friend from our Washington DC Mission.

Even had old fashion Smores one night.

We are really enjoying the warm weather down here in Mesa. We think we may want to spend our future winters here.

Month of January 2016

Cleaned up a few things, attended a wedding reception and headed south to spend some time with Brent & Lorraine.

Spent a couple of days with Lee & Nancy in Salt Lake City.

Stayed overnight with Lola & Jeff in St. George.

Went shopping for kitchen cabinets with Brent & Lorraine. They are redoing the floors and kitchen cabinets in their home in Mesa.

Ate at Jeff’s brother’s sandwich shop in Mesa.

Visited with the Slades (friends from our WDC mission).

On the 23rd we started tearing Brent & Lorraine’s kitchen apart.

Then we got a call that Rich’s Uncle Seth Neibaur had passed away so we headed back north for the funeral.
View of a snow capped mountain on the way.

After the funeral we headed for Mesa AZ but bad weather kept us in SLC for a few days.

When that cleared we headed south again.

Check back next month for all the excitement we stirred up in Arizona.

Month of December 2015

Started off the month with our Brentwood Ward Christmas party. Good meal, entertainment by the primary portraying the Christmas story. 

At the local Festival of Trees in November we ran into a high school friend of Rich’s. He and his wife invited us up to Plano to their home for a get together with some of their friends. One of which had served in the Kenya Nairobi Mission in the mission home. We had a great evening with them.

On the 14th we attended the Nutcracker ballet put on by the Idaho Ballet Theatre.

Several doctor appointments. Sandra had a stress test at her new doctor’s office and she passed with flying colors.

We held a neighborhood party and enjoyed visiting with many of our neighbors that we haven’t seen for some time.

The highlight of the month was our family party on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Day we took breakfast around to all our kids to see what everyone got for Christmas. That was really fun.

Then on the 26th we went to SLC to see Lee & Nancy. They just returned from their mission to Guatemala.  They reported in church on Sunday. They had a family get together afterwards and we enjoyed visiting with all their family. Can you believe that Rich did not take any photos?

Our New Years party with the dinner club was a flop. Everyone was either gone south for the winter, sick or in the hospital. We just sat home and did nothing. Didn’t even wait up for midnight. Pretty sad.

Month of November 2015

Well, we didn’t get any traveling done this month. Too many irons in the fire.

Started off with doing a fireside for the High Priests of our ward. We pretty much did the same thing as we did for our “Empty Nesters” group. Showed our mission farewell video and talked about some of the experiences we had in the temple and around the WDC area.

Rich’s cataract surgery was scheduled for Oct. 27th but his INR was too high and they put it off for a week. So he had his right eye done on the 3rd of Nov. and the left done on the 10th. What an experience!

He says he can see so much better now. It used to be that he would say, “What does that road sign say”.  And now it’s, “Can you read that sign?, well I can.”

We did indeed tear out the front room wall.

This is before:

This is after:

The flooring:

Sandra found an area rug online for half price and ordered it. She really loves that room now.

The Idaho Falls Youth Arts Center presented a play of Peter Pan this year so we got tickets and took Taylor our grandson and Janna our daughter to see it. We were really impressed with all the acting, singing and flying around. For a small town local production they did a great job on the aerial stuff.

We got our flu shots and Sandra finally got into a doctor. He put her through a stress test. She was really uptight about that but passed with flying colors.

On the 21st our grandson Tyson was baptized. He (and we) have been working with the missionaries for the past couple of months. It was a very happy occasion for us.

We had stake conference this month and the visiting authority was Elder Sexton of the 70. It was very inspiring. He talked a lot about hanging on ’till the end through times of trial and stress.

Then on Sunday we had our family Thanksgiving feast. Thanksgiving day was not going to work out for us as we have too many in-laws and out-laws now and everyone was either traveling to other places or had to work. We had a good time on Sunday and then for the next couple of days the girls quilted like crazy. They did 2 for Jacki and 3 for Janna. 

On Tuesday we had another get together.

For Thanksgiving we just sat around and did nothing. (Actually Rich is trying to master the new iMovie app so he spent all day every day on the computer. And Sandra was going nuts with cabin fever.) We didn’t even leave the house for 3 days.

So after all our plans to travel, we didn't do any. We probably won’t now until after Christmas.

Month of October 2015

We look at our calendar for the month and wonder what we filled our time with. What a boring month.

Looks like all we did was go to doctors. The eye doctor told Rich he needed cataract surgery so we scheduled that for later in the month.

We enjoyed General Conference.

And we attended several funerals. All our friends and associates are dying off.

We did a bunch of odd jobs around the house. We moved the book cases from the office (front room) back into the family room.

Sandra has been working on the castle and came up with a plan for the draw bridge. She purchased a winch and we installed that. Works really well. Just hope the kids don’t get a finger caught in the mechanism.

Our next big project is to tear out the wall in the front room.

Sandra’s roses are still looking really good for this late in the season. Here’s the one that was given to us at Shawn’s funeral.

One day we went out to drop off some photos to the Prices (Kenda’s Mom & Dad - Shawn’s ex wife) and decided to stop by and see Shawn’s grave. Still having a hard time with his passing.

Had an interesting “Empty Nester’s” home evening this month. We talked about the different angel Moronis on various temples.

Rich had to put off his cataract surgery for a week due to thin blood. We’ll report on that next month.

We had our friends the Hagedorns over for dinner. They have a mission call to serve in the Johannesburg Temple in South Africa.

Then we closed out the month with Halloween. 

We took our grandson Tyson to the church and let him hand our candy at the Trunk-or-Treat while we sat in the nice warm car.

Maybe life will slow down next month and we can do some traveling.